A masterpiece by a writer long neglected in America, The Hothouse created a literary stir when it appeared in hardcover. Evoking comparisons to works by James Joyce and Malcolm Lowry, it traces the final two days in the life of a minor German politician, Keetenheuve, a man disillusioned by the corruption of post-World War II German politics and grieving after the sudden death of his wife. With a passionate, despairing voice, Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996), whom Gunter Grass once called the "greatest living German writer," creates a portrait of idealism crushed by political and personal compromise.

Author Biography

Wolfgang Koeppen's (1906-1996) The Hothouse was named one of the Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. For his translations, acclaimed poet Michael Hofmann has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Dublin International IMPAC Award, the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and The Schlegel-Tieck Prize (four times). He is the highly acclaimed translator of, among others, Kafka, Brecht, and Joseph Roth.